Conflict with Iraq raises moral issue
In her attempt to justify war against Iraq, Secretary of State Albright recently declared that our government has the authority, the means and the will to wage war. Tragically, she was two-thirds correct. The means and the will are abundantly obvious. Hopefully, she soon will be only one-third correct as the American people exert their national will in accordance with God’s will for peace, something a nation under God must do to be true. Along with truth, morality seems to have been an early casualty of these war preparations. It must not remain one. Before the body count rises dramatically, the moral question must be returned to the center of national debate where it belongs. The central question is not whether the U.S. has the means or the will to wage war against Iraq today. It is whether or not the U.S. has the right – the moral right – to do so. All tenets of world civilizations and world religions, especially Christianity, answer with a resounding “No!”As inconvenient as it may be for war propagandists, there is this longstanding moral thesis of a “just war” which prevents government from exercising its innate will for war except under very stringent conditions. For pacifists, “just war” is an oxymoron and for warmongers just waging war is a panacea. Just war advocates certainly have a lot more in common with the former than the latter. As defined by Augustine in the fifth century and refined by Aquinas and other theologians subsequently, there are at least seven criteria which must all be met before a war can properly be defined as just. A review of reality reveals that not a single one of these just war criteria is fully met in a war against Iraq.1. War must be authorized by government; mostly unmet.There is more to the U.S. government (thank God!) than Clinton-Albright-Cohen.2. War must be based upon a just cause; clearly unmet.Love of oil and hatred of one man are not just causes.3. War must be waged with the right intention; woefully unmet.Arrogance of new power and experimentation of new weaponry do not qualify for moral motivation.4. War must be waged with proper means so that the lives of noncombatants are protected; miserably unmet. Over 1,000,000 Iraqis (perhaps as many as 600,000 children) have died as a direct result of the cruel sanctions imposed upon this destitute nation; more children have needlessly died in Iraq in the past seven years than the combined body count of two atomic bombs on Japan and years of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans; millions of more innocent lives are threatened daily. 5. War must be the last resort, only after all possibilities of peaceful settlement have been exhausted; unmet. Peace has not been any real chance.6. War can be undertaken only when the just side will likely prevail; unmet. There are no winners and there is no justice in war.7. War can be undertaken only when the resultant good will be greater than the inevitable destruction; unmet. Turning the cradle of civilization into a vast wasteland has no good in it.The war begun with Desert Storm, continued with the sanctions and escalated in these days, fails the test of morality abysmally. Along with many innocent lives, seven years have expired since the Gulf War. Seven years of devastating sanction have left over 1.2 million Iraqi civilians dead; medical supplies and food stuffs depleted; the infrastructure destroyed; and the country in ruins. The majority of Iraqis have been surviving on a semi-starvation diet for years. Some 4,500 children under the age of five die each month from hunger and preventable disease. In the midst of this holocaust, in its sabbatical year, plans are underway to unleash even more horror upon the Iraqi people and thereby compound the moral bankruptcy and universal indignation.It is time to rethink, repent and return to ancient wisdom. In the ancient civilizations of this once fertile crescent, the sabbatical year was a time of renewal and revival. The poor were given relief; slaves were freed; and the land was regenerated. Desert Thunder has anything but this happy outcome in store, making it doubly immoral. It fails the just war criteria miserably, but it succeeds in converting a holy year into a hell on earth. The time for inversion, instead of invasion, is clearly at hand.Let the crucifixion of the Iraqi people end. Let there be a resurrection of peace and justice for all. Let the ancient promise from this ancient holy land be fulfilled in this sabbatical year of their misery:”They shall beat their swords into plowshares;and their spears into pruning hooks.Nation will not take up sword against nation,nor will they train for war anymore.”Let us remind our government that our God is one of justice, not just us against the rest of the world in an unjust war.
Rev. Werner LangePastor, Auburn Community United Church of ChristOSU grad, B.A. 1968, M.A. 1972
